The story describes how Varga was injured in an Arkansas car crash as a young mother and experienced much personal turmoil before finding a way to reinvent herself.

Despite balance issues and an altered voice, Varga became a certified personal trainer and started offering fitness classes for older adults. The Louisville native and members of her family also became active in the Brain Injury Alliance of Kentucky.

Teaching seniors "makes me feel like I've just come alive again," Varga said in a Courier-Journal article on her fitness classes last year. Seniors think "If she can do this, I can do this."

Some proceeds from the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" book will go to the Bob Woodruff Foundation, which assists injured veterans. The foundation is named for broadcast journalist Bob Woodruff, who sustained a brain injury in 2006 while reporting in Iraq. His wife, Lee, wrote the book's foreward.